Paille suspended 4 games for what appeared to be a clean hit. And this is a clear attack on big hits, they could have given him the fines that Foligno and Gilbert got, but no because it was a big hit they gave him 4 to please the Dregers and MacKenzies who seem to be rallying as hard as ever against body contact int eh nhl

"I assure you the hits along the boards he(Aaron Downey) constantly threw SEVERAL TIMES EVERY SHIFT were far more damaging hits that what Kronwall throws."- uk_redwingHockeyArchiveTwitter

Paille suspended 4 games for what appeared to be a clean hit. And this is a clear attack on big hits, they could have given him the fines that Foligno and Gilbert got, but no because it was a big hit they gave him 4 to please the Dregers and MacKenzies who seem to be rallying as hard as ever against body contact int eh nhl

Paile was clearly in Sawada's line of vision and it wasn't an illegal hit otherwise, no elbow/charge/ect... A good clean hit, the only thing that is being argued is that it was a blindside, but if Sawada could have seen him comign if his head was up I don't know how you can put fault on anyone but sawada. It is a simple concept that most people for some concept can't grasp

"I assure you the hits along the boards he(Aaron Downey) constantly threw SEVERAL TIMES EVERY SHIFT were far more damaging hits that what Kronwall throws."- uk_redwingHockeyArchiveTwitter

Paile was clearly in Sawada's line of vision and it wasn't an illegal hit otherwise, no elbow/charge/ect... A good clean hit, the only thing that is being argued is that it was a blindside, but if Sawada could have seen him comign if his head was up I don't know how you can put fault on anyone but sawada. It is a simple concept that most people for some concept can't grasp

To me, it looked like a classic backside pressure/lateral/blindside hit, fits almost prefectly into how the rule was written. Some might even argue that his eblow came up, but it's hard to tell whether that was just follow through or not.

He tried to make a straight-up, east-west hit as the backchecking forward, and he caught a guy who had his head down when he shouldn't have. That's gonna remain on Paille's rap sheet, forever branding him as a headhunter.

Yeah, agreed. Pretty sure Paille is not going to be labeled a "head hunter" his entire career after this. I am pretty sure the trained hockey eye could tell that Sawada just had to pick his head up to avoid the brunt of this.